creative chaos from an everyday mind

Tag Archives: stamp-a-faire

I’m on the fast track to becoming a regular homemade embellisher! In addition to creating some homemade washi tape that has yet to find a project-home, and creating a doily rosette medallion, Jessica Witty made a tutorial using Clearly Creative Cardstock to make a stamped transparent overlay for a card front. Well, the nano-second I saw that, I was all over it like white on rice. Only with much more enthusiasm.

I had recently gotten a package of this very elusive cardstock when I noticed it had finally come back into stock after a very lengthy delay in which my nails became nubs from tap-tap-tapping them in anxious impatience during the wait. I love the look of clear transparent overlays, and had some transparency sheets (you know, those kind teachers use for the overhead projector in school?), but they just didn’t work so well for stamping…or die cutting…or regular cutting…or, well, any type of crafting endeavor I could wrap my little brain around. So I was uber excited when I finally got my greedy little paws on the diamond mine. But as is my way, I put it “away” in its new home where it would be safe and then never got around to pulling it back out and using it. Ppsh. Yeah, I know.

So what happened next, you ask? Well, another designer had me in mind when she made her DIY homemade embellishment tutorial. It’s so nice to be thought of. 😉

I LOVE how this card turned out!! The colors didn’t come out right at all, mind you. The satin ribbon should be closer to Hawaiian Shores, not Ocean Tides, but you get the idea. I love how bright and sunny and positively FUN it is! It really came together perfectly considering I didn’t have much of a plan in mind when I started out. I wanted to add a little touch of something into the inside of the card since the outside is so happy, so I stamped a sun and some rays around the inside. It’s meant to be written over with your message, so I kept it light and simple.

There were so many fantastic ideas for the homemade embellishments tutorials challenge that I couldn’t pick just one – it was another ribbon moment, relived. I created some homemade washi tape using the tutorial Danielle Flanders made, but I haven’t yet put them on a card. They are currently in a time out under a heavy stack trying to straighten out their behavior. 😉 More on them later.

I happen to swoon for rosettes. Total foot-popping, heart soaring, swoon. As it happens, Betsy Veldman must have had me in mind because she created a tutorial on making a homemade rosette from a doily die. A doily die?!? Yes, you and I both heard right. A doily die. I’d never used one to make a rosette before either, but as it turns out, it makes it very pretty! And as it so happens, I’d recently gotten my hands on some utterly beautiful doily dies that I suppose I was destined to put to good use today.

The die that I used had pretty wide spaced scalloping around the edge, so the rosette came out pretty fat – too fat for a card to my way of thinking. To remedy that issue, I took a 6×6 pattern paper pad, splayed my palm over it, and crushed that little rosette into submission. The result was a very pretty looking, much flatter and more appropriate for a card rosette. The colors weren’t what I envisioned when I started with that purple paper. I pictured bright and cheerful in my mind. It’s a little more muted this way and less my-comfort-zone, so I kept adding little touches until it looked/felt right.

Another of the challenges was to create a set of cards for yourself or for a gift. I opted to make a set of thank you cards to give to my mom for helping me recently with a very heart shredding situation. But we won’t get in to that. I need to keep my tear ducts dry and my heart firmly entrenched in my chest.

I wanted to make her a set of cards that was both elegant and universal, so I hit up my all-time favorite, go-to stamp set, Mehndi Medallions. I absolutely, positively, unconditionally adore that set. It has a infinite number of uses. It’s the Ranch Dressing of stamp sets. It goes with everything. 😉

I wanted to give it a subtle amount of dimension, so I added an assortment of rhinestones & pearls to each card and used some small circle punches to cut out a couple of the smaller medallion accents to pop them up with foam dots.

It’s a challenge upon a challenge for me to work with only a limited, set number of supplies. Why did I try to strong-arm this challenge, again? Oh, yeah, I was still preening from my success with the ribbon. The tail feathers blind sighted me. Being an eternal optimist (hi, that’s me), on the bright side, it turned out very nicely. It’s a lot prettier than I was expecting it to be when I was creating it. I think the colors really contributed to that. I wasn’t sure about them at first, but they came together in harmony at the end. Yeah to success!

The Knots Badge included tutorials encompassing ribbon techniques and tips. I was really looking forward to this lesson because I absolutely love me some ribbon! I find ribbon very flirty and girly and fun, so I’m all over that. The problems arise when I can’t stop staring at it long enough to figure out how to incorporate it into my project. I try. Diligently. I just fail. Repeatedly. But no more! Now, armed with these versatile and broad techniques, I can feel confident tackling the application of ribbon onto my cards!

Did I just sound like a cheesy commercial sales pitch? Because it sounded like I just sounded like a cheesy commercial sales pitch. …

I was so impressed with all the wonderful ideas, that I tried more than one for this challenge. The first one I tackled was Erin Lincoln’s idea to back a negative die cut image with ribbon strips to create a colorful pattern in the die image. She made a beautiful pink ombre hued tiered cake in her card. I immediately thought how cute it would it be to do it using the clouds die.

It may be hard to see in the photos, but I gave the sky a beautiful pearled sheen with some Tattered Angel’s Glimmer Mist. When I first started assembling it, I wasn’t diggin’ the plain white and thought it needed just a little something, but not too much of something because I didn’t want to detract from the scene in the sky. I rarely find myself using Glimmer Mist (I only have two shades), but in this case, it gave the sky the absolutely perfect touch!

The other technique I really wanted to try was Dawn McVey’s basic bow & basic knot. While this may sound simple, she ties some of the most gorgeous bows I’ve ever seen & getting it just right is a lot more challenging that it may seem. In fact, after giving it a try, I can safely say my hands & fingers are going to need a lot of practice!

The amazing gals over at Papertrey Ink worked their collective tails off this month to create an all-emcompassing “stamp camp” for their customers. It made the “all-encompassing” benchmark because it was executed entirely online. People got together in their own locales, of course, but everyone participated collaboratively via the wonderful convenience of the internet. Bless Bob Taylor and his revolutionary-inducing lightbulb moment. Now if only someone can devise a way for me to sleep normally without having to miss the opening ceremonies because West Cost time (hello, moon) doesn’t confer well with East Coast time. They may not even be on speaking terms anymore…

Yes, my long-winded explanation has a point. I’m glad you asked. The point is that although I missed the first few technique challenges due to unconsciousness, I was able to catch myself up – more or less – and get some cards done to submit. I have until Monday, you know. Noon by East Cost standards, which translates to 9 here. Nichole was gracious enough to allow for the incongruence of timezones.

But the beginning challenge – the “make and take” – was due by Saturday night, which I inconveniently missed. Whoops. But fear not, fellow readers (do I even have any of you yet??), showcasing my creative whimseys is what this blog is all about! Now put your right foot in and let’s hokey pokey!

The card Nichole created utilized single layer stamping, but that morning I was the unfortunate victim of a Stamper’s Slip (I dropped my inked stamp). Thankfully, I’m not currently hormonal and I was able to keep my wrathful fury on a very jerky leash, so instead of raining my image with tears or shredding it into tiny pieces, my caffeine-alert mind came up with a solution. Die cut and re-stamp a new image of the flower that my **** inked leaf stamp landed on and pop it up to overlay onto that little mishap. And since I was adding some dimension with the popped flower, I opted to add some pearls for a slightly more romantic look. It all worked out in the end, which is what I love best. 🙂